


you came for me to follow, and we kissed on distant shores

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Jyn Erso, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rogue One - some of them live, a vacation for their own good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 20:19:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11928501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: They're sent on some sort of furlough, but they're sent to a place that makes them thoroughly uncomfortable and thoroughly uneasy.So they take refuge the only way they know how: they take refuge in each other.





	you came for me to follow, and we kissed on distant shores

Only the sounds that she hears as she slowly wakes up are familiar.

Engines whirring and whining, raising a thin reedy din in the narrow confines of a cockpit, echoes rumbling in her very teeth and bones -- someone is going to have to perform a lot of maintenance on this thing, she thinks, vaguely, trying to tame her mind in its looping, pain-edged wanderings. The clickety-click of something very near her right hand, like signal receivers or like navicomputers working through different sets of coordinates and different sets of destinations. The rising and falling hum of other systems: life support, and stabilizers, and ten thousand other details related to the very fact that she’s in something that’s moving, something that’s whirling through hyperspace and she doesn’t know where she’s going, doesn’t know anything other than the lingering burr of the ache in her legs -- 

Her legs -- _her legs_ \--

Before she can take a shallow breath, before she can control the sudden leap in her heartbeat as she’s ensnared in panic, she tries to move her left foot -- she feels its presence, feels the weight of her boot, the ragged edges of her trousers -- her left foot moves, just a little, and she’s not appeased. She’s not satisfied. She tries to move her right foot and fresh pain rockets down her nerves, a harsh bolt that explodes along her skin -- 

Jyn Erso opens her eyes.

Sees before understanding: here are her feet. She is still wearing her grimy boots, her mud-stained trousers, her filthy socks -- and wrapped spiraling up around calves, the sickly green of bacta packs.

She can see, with her own eyes, that her feet are moving because she is thinking that she has to move her feet.

Again, twitching from side to side, she moves her left foot and then her right. Both under her control, despite her juddering nerves.

So now where is she? She can recognize that she is in a shuttle, and she can see the mottled streaking lights of hyperspace flashing fitfully outside the viewports, and she can also see that she is alone in this shuttle, or at least in this shuttle’s cockpit.

And she is incontrovertibly in the co-pilot’s position, which means she can’t be alone inside this thing.

Shaking hands as she reaches for her restraints and pops the clasps open. Shaking knees as she grits her teeth, as she prepares herself mentally for the process of getting to her feet -- such a simple thing, such a thing that she takes for granted, and she never learns -- 

Boots to the deck. She chokes on the whine that threatens to break from her throat. Hands in a hard grip on the edges of her seat, propelling, up and out and -- 

Everything below her knees screams at her, white flashes in her vision as she tries not to pass out, and she’s pitching forward, she’s losing her balance, she’s going to have to add another bruise and another kind of pain to the catalog and -- 

A soft phrase that blisters her ears anyway: Huttese invective, and it explodes from some other being’s mouth, and the first thing she understands is that she hasn’t fallen yet, hasn’t hit the floor or the chair or the control surfaces, and that’s because the fall has been suspended by -- familiar arms, familiar strength -- 

“I leave you alone for one moment,” that familiar voice says.

Not to chastise, she thinks, so she doesn’t have to recoil or go on the defensive.

“You would pick a moment when I had to leave you alone to get up,” that voice continues, and she knows that lilt now, knows the cadence of that accent, and it’s more than relief that allows her to go limp.

When she blinks, when she looks up, she can see the hypospray sticking out of Cassian’s pocket, and she can feel the site of its impact, the point at which the painkiller must have entered her body because cool calm is rushing through her body, and she can take a clean breath, and stagger back toward the chair. 

“No more painkillers,” she rasps.

“Yes.” He hands her a bottle of water, cool and pearled, and she drinks it greedily. Pours the last splash onto her face to sluice away the sweat of the past few minutes.

Cassian is muttering to himself over the sheet of flimsi in his hands, and she sighs, and tries to organize her thoughts, tries to remember how they’ve arrived at this point.

“Mission briefing,” she doesn’t quite ask.

“Not quite.”

She blinks, and looks at him.

Watches him set the sheet aside. “Well, yes, in a way, we are supposed to be on our way to doing something. But it’s a reconnaissance thing. We’re not expected to be mission-ready for a few weeks.” He chuckles, softly. “I told Leia to her face that I could see what she was planning, and she said, good, I better make sure I had packed the right bags.”

“Explain.”

“You remember Dantooine,” Cassian asks.

Jyn winces, and can’t help but look at her feet. “I do.”

(Mud caked on her boots and his, unexpected weather disturbances and a river in full flood, and an extra blaster tucked into her sleeve because there had been too many enemies to deal with even as they escorted their allies to safety, and the shattering impact of getting shot and then almost drowning -- )

“So we’re going somewhere else. Instructions are to observe and to report. We’re -- we’re the advance party, basically, they’ll be sending a few others to establish Alliance presence but we’re the ones who tell them whether it’s a go or a no-go.”

“That never turns out well for us,” she points out. “No different from half your usual missions, or most of mine.”

“There’s a no-blasters policy where we’re going,” he says, and Jyn blinks again.

“Say that again.”

“No blasters where we’re going.”

She can’t help but reach for her hip, where she carries a holdout blaster that has been with her since Jedha -- she’d taken it from one of the Partisans as they ran for their lives from the impact of the Death Star’s test run -- 

“That, too,” Cassian says, and he turns his hands palms out towards her. “It’s against the rules of the dominant cultures.”

She tries not to let her dismay show. “Imperial presence?”

“Suspected, but that’s what we’re going to be there for: we confirm that they’re there or they’re not there, and the Alliance can pick and choose the right beings for the actual job of staying on.”

“Hence -- weeks?”

“Hence weeks.” His smile is a little strained around the edges. “Should give you enough time to feel better.”

She’s struck by a sudden thought. “This better not be Leia’s idea of -- sending us on a vacation.”

“We’ve missed the furlough window, actually,” he says.

What an odd idea, that a struggle spanning all the stars of a galaxy could actually pause to observe some kind of furlough -- but then again, Jyn knows how wearing a war can be, when there’s no escaping it.

“Furlough’s for -- everyone in the Alliance?” she asks, anyway.

Cassian holds one hand out at chest level, palm down. Tips his fingers from side to side like an X-wing that doesn’t quite manage to roll. “Do we actually have the privilege of setting aside the fight against the Imperials? No.

“Do we need to rest from the fighting? Yes. It’s -- not easy, as you might guess. If you’re in an active conflict zone, nothing is guaranteed, not even your next breath or the next supply drop. If you’re an officer, if you’re part of the executive, the same is true, even if you never see combat.

“We’re all threatened, but -- you tell me how you can keep fighting and fighting and never lose focus.”

She thinks of the Partisans and of the few short periods of dormancy into which they had always been forced -- and she thinks of the increasing violence of their missions, the increasing recklessness, the increasing hatred within the ranks.

“Combat stress,” she says, trying to remember something that she’d overheard: a discussion of some kind that had included Wedge Antilles, Luke Skywalker, and Bodhi and Chirrut.

“That kills us, as surely as the Imperials do,” Cassian says. “I -- can’t say I am fond of furlough. I feel like I’m wasting time when I’m not -- working. But that is a sure sign that I do need to take a break.” Quiet sigh. “Next time you see Kay, ask him how many times I’ve almost gotten killed because I was under too much stress.”

“I don’t have to ask him,” she says, and reaches out for his hand. “I was there for some of it, remember?”

“It was worse,” he says, simply. “I’ve been through worse.”

*

The world that they land on makes the hackles on the back of her neck rise, long before Cassian points the shuttle toward their landing zone.

She can feel her knuckles growing white as she grips at the frame of her chair.

And she can hear him grinding his teeth, and knows exactly how he feels.

“You going to send the message to Leia,” she says, “or am I?”

“Ask me after we’ve survived this one,” Cassian says.

And many beings might enjoy looking at soft shores wrapped in fine gray sand, at a deep blue-green ocean lapping onto those shores in endless white-foamed waves, at graceful tall plants reaching for the sky and swaying in constant winds.

The difference between this landing zone and the Imperial Archives installation at Scarif is -- the complete absence of any Imperial presence. No brutal-edged architecture rising from the sandy soils, no weapons hiding in the sparse undergrowth, no TIE fighters parked in makeshift bays to streak death across the sky.

It still looks too much like a place where she almost died.

Where Cassian almost died in her arms -- and even now, she makes herself try to close the distance between herself and him, even when he’s concentrating on landing.

As soon as he sets them down in a clearing surrounded by lush green plants and lush green shadows, she gets to her feet and wraps herself around him, pinning him into the chair -- and he grasps back at her, fierce and desperate, and she feels him turn his head, rub his nose against her cheek. 

“We can get out of here,” she offers. “Kriff the mission.”

“I know you don’t mean that,” he says, muffled.

“Yes, I don’t mean it. This is -- we need to do things for the Alliance here. But here is -- ”

“This is not a good place.”

How long they stay locked together, shivering in the wind-stirred warmth, she has no idea.

By unspoken and mutual agreement, they agree to lay out their things in the cargo bay.

They leave the doors open so they don’t stifle. 

If she half-collapses into the pile of blankets, there’s no one to comment, as Cassian is already lying full-length laid out, with one arm thrown over his eyes.

She lies down next to him, and takes his free hand.

“I don’t want to get lost in the sound of the waves,” he whispers, after a long moment.

“I’m here,” she says.

*

She wakes in the middle of the night to a low, sweet song.

Cassian’s voice falters, from time to time, and when he tries to catch his breath she can hear the susurrus of the sea that murmurs constantly.

“I -- I can’t not listen to it,” he says.

“We can’t escape it,” she says. “So we might as well do something about it.”

“Jyn.”

“I don’t trust this place,” she says, and she has to brace herself against a bulkhead so she can take off her boots. “I don’t even trust this ship. All I trust is you.”

“And you know I trust you,” she hears him say.

“So come on. Let’s -- let’s get this over with.”

“I don’t know what _this_ is,” Cassian says, but she just looks at him, and he blinks in the low light, and starts taking off his shoes and his shirt.

He keeps his eyes glued to the sand beneath their feet, and she leans heavily into his side -- and together they hobble over wind-smoothed rocks, over thorn-choked bushes, under the quiet calling of night-flyers and night-hunters.

Slow steps to the waterline, to the blur of the boundary between the land and the sea. She can’t see the flowers that lend their sweet and spicy scents to the salt on the breeze; she can’t see the fire that produces the hint of smoke on the wind.

“Jyn,” Cassian whispers, from very close by.

And she can see him, in the light of four moons, gold and silver light sparkling on the foam-dashed shore, in the footsteps that they leave on the sand that are quickly washed away as they keep moving forward.

“It’s all right,” she says.

“Is it?” 

She kisses him, to forgive him his skepticism, and corrects herself: “It’s all right for now.”

A long moment passes before he nods, and then leans his cheek against her shoulder.

“Down,” Jyn says, gently, and though her own knees and legs protest, she guides him down to sit on the sand with her.

It’s a surprise to Jyn when Cassian settles -- and then pulls her into his lap.

It’s not a surprise when he whispers against the back of her neck, _Te amo._

“I love you too,” she says, softly, into the back of his hand, and she brushes a kiss over his knuckles.

“This place frightens me,” she hears him say. “But maybe not as much in the middle of the night.”

“We’d be more nervous in the daytime,” she says, understanding.

“Better practice hiding that fear then, before we have to -- go talk to other beings.”

“I can do it if I know you’re watching me,” she says.

“Then I won’t take my eyes off you.”

And that makes her scramble out of his lap so she can see him, so she can see his dear eyes in the bright moonlight, so she can brush her fingers over his mouth.

So she can take him in.

His smile that shakes at the edges, his eyes rimmed with fatigued bruises.

She wonders what he sees when he looks at her like this.

And then she knows, because he says, “You save me.”

“You save yourself too,” she says, overwhelmed.

“And I do it because it’s good to see you, because it’s good to be with you.”

“I -- have a lot to do to live up to that,” she says, laughing softly.

When she kisses him again, she can still hear the waves and the wind, but she can hear him breathe, and he is louder than the fears, louder than her pain, louder than the tears she doesn’t dare shed.

**Author's Note:**

> Look me up on tumblr at [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com)!


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